The Fed Accusation

Is everyone I don’t like on the FBI payroll?

Last weekend, neo-Nazis took a field trip to Orlando. Two groups were spotted around the city. The first, totalling around 15, gathered outside the entrance to Disney World, while a slightly larger group of roughly 50 people (including the so-called Blood Tribe and the Goyim Defense League) marched elsewhere. 

The sight of masked men flying swastika flags naturally drew media attention. The few unmasked members, covered as they were in face tattoos, weren't a pretty sight either. Everyone involved--from the tattoos to the slogans and outfits--could have been cast to play a far right boogeyman. And that's exactly the story conservative media ran with. 

According to popular figures on the right, the so-called protest was orchestrated by federal law enforcement and/or intelligence agencies. No one, the thinking went, could be stupid enough to participate in such a clown show. The feds must be propping up these guys to make the entire Right look bad.

These accusations are now common. Any time Nazis or white nationalists demonstrate in public, right-wing social media immediately denounces them as law enforcement plants. The mainstream media has picked up on this recent trend. “The reflex to declare any assembling of right-wing extremists or violence committed by them a ‘false flag," wrote left-wing reporter Jared Holt, "has seemed to strengthen among conservative social media figures in recent years, which in turn has molded their audiences to do the same."

While this instinct may serve a good purpose, it's not strictly speaking true. Lots of stupid right wing movements exist independent of federal law enforcement. And not every group of idiots that fails an optics check is a trap laid by the feds, even though they may undermine the right's cause. 

It is absolutely true that the federal government infiltrates far right groups with informants and sometimes undercover agents. There’s a long record of these elements pushing groups to plot serious crimes. Entire sections of federal law enforcement exist to make arrests that demonstrate to the public that agents are protecting us from dangerous terrorists. They need these high profile cases to fortify the delusion that “white supremacists” pose a grave threat to the country. 

We saw this in the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping case, the rise of the Atomwaffen group, and The Base. In all three situations, feds infiltrated a right-wing group and convinced members to commit serious crimes. All three cases resulted in headlines about a “far-right” terror threat, even though the crimes were concocted by people on the federal payroll. The feds got what they wanted out of their marks.

That's not what happened in Orlando. The idiots waving swastika flags in front of Disney are not committing any crimes. Conservatives will claim they’re intended to make the whole Right look bad, but the usual playbook is a more effective way to do that. Convince some dimwits to agree to a terror plot and arrest them. Protests just make the participants look dumb. 

The demonstrators in Orlando probably have informants in their ranks, but it’s unlikely that the FBI organized and planned the demonstrations. Never discount the genuine stupidity of people. The cartoonish optics of these protests may not appeal to normal people or even folks on Twitter, but they're popular in other corners of the internet. Gab and Telegram are rife with accounts praising the stunt. Just because they're not on X doesn't mean they don't exist.  

People like this are out there. There have always been fruit loops like this staging tiny demonstrations across America. We're a massive country of 400 million people. That doesn't make them something to worry about. They're not. 

The constant fed accusations have an upside. People are aware that bad actors are lurking around the Right. They recognize stupid behavior as, well, stupid. The average right-winger now knows that marching around in a mask with Nazi or strange symbols is a bad idea. It beclowns your politics and trivializes your beliefs. Everyone thinking these guys are feds at least shows that nobody on the Right wants to associate with this circus.

But they also give the wrong impression of how the feds behave. They are not setting up embarrassing protests outside of Disney World. They’re in chat rooms and in real life groups convincing misguided souls to hatch terrorist plots. They are literally fed poasting. The Right's civil war fantasies and fever dreams of imminent collapse help them in that task. Guys who think every person with a sonnenrad in public is an FBI agent will spend hours boasting that they’re ready to overthrow the government. People should be more careful of being drawn into that kind of rhetorical trap that ensnared the Whitmer kidnapping plotters.

Seeing feds everywhere induces a kind of paranoia. It makes conservatives see the federal government as an omnipotent force that is behind every little thing. That person arguing with you on Twitter? He's a fed. Computer freezing up? The feds. Weird bump in the night? The feds again! So many right-wingers act like feds are hiding under the bed. This doesn’t stop them from fedpoasting, of course. It just leads to delusions of grandeur and intense paranoia. People are too scared to take concrete and achievable action from fear of feds hiding behind the corner–all while insisting that they are prepared for violent revolution.

An illustrative example of this trend occurred this past June, when conservative paranoia and illiteracy led to the doxing of an innocent fellow traveler. According to some conservatives, alleged racists should be doxed to prove they’re feds. That's what happened after a video went viral of Proud Boys fighting an obscure group called the “Rose City Nationalists” in Portland, Oregon. The Proud Boys claimed the masked nationalists were feds and sought to unmask them. Conservatives agreed with the Proud Boys and tried to find out who these guys were. Their efforts failed, but that didn't stop them from declaring victory. They claimed one attendee was Antifa because his dox was posted to an Antifa website. For some reason, they thought the dox declaring the guy a Nazi was an Antifa roster. The other person independent journalists  “identified” turned out to be a random college student who was over a 1000 miles away during the protest. 

Shoddy investigative work aside, the most problematic aspect was prominent conservatives calling for the doxing of racists in pursuit of these harebrained schemes. Influencer Benny Johnson wanted more unmasking of “racists” to strengthen the conservative movement. “This is a win, win,” he tweeted in June. “Let’s say these really ARE just dumb racist punks. Not welcome. They have no place in our movement. Now they’re exposed. Good. If they ARE Feds, this is a taxpayer funded psy-op meant to defame and entrap innocent Americans. Now they’re exposed. Good.” This sentiment was shared by Elon Musk and several others. 

It’s never a good idea for conservatives to take up Antifa’s mission. They’re unlikely to find feds in trying to “expose” the demonstrators. They’re more likely to just dox some random person who may not even be a masked demonstrator. It’s counterproductive and a waste of time. 

Conservatives don’t need fed accusations to distance themselves from masked Nazis. They're idiots and we should ignore them. These people have always been around doing tiny demonstrations. They’re completely irrelevant. It’s good that everyone doesn’t want to associate with them, but it shouldn’t push people into total fed paranoia. 

Feds are out there and they want people with right-wing views to commit serious crimes. Avoiding people who encourage you to become a terrorist is a better way of minimizing the fed presence than shrieking “FEDS!” any time some right-wing group appears in public.